Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Roark"
<paul.roark@v...> wrote:
> It may be that on some of the older dye printers the Gimp print
engine has
> some disadvantages compared to the Epson driver.
> 
> For example, I've done limited testing with IJC and QTR on a 1280
and found
> the dmax of both systems low compared to the Epson driver.

Have you debuged a USB trace to the printer and seen that the ink mix
is? Or used a spectrophotometer to check what Epson's "black" looks
like, compared to some different black "mixes"?

It's not uncommon for a max black on a dye inkjet to be an interesting
"past 100%" ink mix. Often with a magenta or magenta/cyan boost, and
as much as a 200% ink load.

Not like the 400-500% loads I use for uncoated watercolor paper, but
scary anyway.

> Test strips I've
> seen from the newer, pigment printers look very good, however.

They tend to be pure black. The pigment printers usually bottom out
below 100% inkload. I've seen some coated papers that can deal with
loads up to about 150% on a 2200, but our 7600 can't go past 80% on
anything coated without making a mess.

> The 1280
> printing speed was also very slow on the 1280 with IJC and QTR
compared to
> the Epson driver.

Now that's just plain weird. I don't recall anything about unusually
slow 1280 speeds on the GIMP Print developers list.

> On my 7500, however, the speed and dmax are fine.  
> 
> So, the dmax and speed problems seem to be printer-specific.

Very much so.

Ciao!

Joe